Reapers (7 page)

The Chases had moved into a vacation home built to look like a log cabin. The moss over the front stoop might even have been real. A manual saw rasped from the back, but in the interest of politeness, she knocked on the front door. When there was no answer, she walked to the back yard. A shirtless twenty-year-old man bent over a post, sawing through one end.

"Sam?" she said. "I'm Ellie Colson. Dee's mom."

Sweat trickled down his thick shoulders. "I know who you are."

"Last night, Quinn Tolbert thought he saw someone outside his place. Where were you?"

"In bed. The sun knows best. No sense being up when you can't see what you're doing."

"What about last Wednesday night?"

"Ask my pillow."

She walked halfway around the sawhorse. "What size shoe do you wear, Sam?"

"Whatever fits."

"Have you ever seen George Tolbert's dogs around?"

He set down the saw and turned to face her, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his brown eyes. "Sure. Mutts are always diggin' around our yard. Somebody ought to paste their fuzzy asses with some rock salt."

"Curious," she said. "Last night, someone stabbed Ringer. Australian shepherd. That wasn't you, was it, Sam?"

He snorted and brushed at the sawdust clinging to the damp hairs on his forearm. "What kind of man stabs a
dog
?"

"A man who's just heard that the woman he wants is engaged to someone else."

"You think I'm hot for Dee?" He laughed and bent back to his saw. "Not hardly, ma'am. Her tits aren't big enough."

A cold tingle flowed through Ellie's hands. Her pistol was in her waistband and she could feel its steel weight against her back. "If I see you around their place, you'll wake up in a box."

His saw rasped. She walked away before her temper got the best of her. She followed the dirt lane up to Forest Home Road and walked so briskly to the dead town of Saranac Lake that she had to strip off her jacket from the sweat. There, she swerved off the highway to grab a bike from the makeshift depository the locals had set up in the parking lot of the Blue Moon, then pedaled to Lake Placid. The trip smelled of cold mountain air and leaves that have fallen but have yet to decay.

Confusingly, the town of Lake Placid was situated on the south shores of several interconnected lakes, one of which shared the same name as the town. She biked to the general store Millie Perkins had set up inside the old resort on Mirror Lake, meaning to ask after Bill Noesi. Millie tucked her hands in her apron, quirked her mouth, and told her Noesi lived in the house at McLenathan Bay a couple miles north.

After two miles of a whole lot of nothing, she reached a Cape Cod cottage at the wrong address, backtracked to another wrong address, this one too far the other way, then crept back toward the Cape Cod, scowling into the trees. A cow lowed to the north. She stopped the bike and stared. Bill Noesi had dragged brush and brambles across the turnoff to his house.

"Mr. Noesi?" she called. "Bill?"

She tried again and got no answer. She found a branch and knotted the arm of her jacket around its tip. As she walked through the woods to the house, she held the branch over her head, the lining of her jacket bright white. She wasn't certain how this custom had sprung up, but generally speaking, the locals understood the person thus approaching their house was a fellow lake-dweller who didn't need to be shot.

Generally speaking.

She deliberately crunched through the leaves on the trail to his front door. He had painted his house a dull green to match the trees. Deer antlers littered the yard. As she climbed up the front steps, a bearded man materialized from the side of the house.

With the branch in her right hand, Ellie went for her gun with her left. "Mr. Noesi?"

"Who asks?" the man rumbled.

She lowered the branch and took her hand from the pistol. "My name's Ellie Colson. I live on the Lower Saranac. Have you seen or spoken to George Tolbert recently?"

The man didn't hesitate. "That animal was perfectly healthy when I sold it to him. It picked up something on his farm or he doesn't know how to treat a beast."

"So you remember him," she said dryly.

"We had words. And then a heck of a lot more words. If you're looking to buy, you come see them for yourself. Talk to anyone in town. Then decide for yourself whether those winds of doubt are just a bunch of hot air."

"Were any of those words recent?"

Noesi shook his shaggy head. "Haven't seen him since last Christmas. I was in town to find a present for a lady friend. George seized the opportunity to slander me."

"Last night, someone killed one of his dogs."

Anger flared in the man's deep-set eyes. "I'm a friend of everything on four legs. You accuse me of killing a dog again and we'll see how I feel about those on two."

"I'm not accusing anyone," she said levelly. "I'm narrowing things down. Thank you for your time, Mr. Noesi."

He watched her go. When she glanced back down the path, he was gone.

She dropped the bike off at the Blue Moon and walked back to the Tolberts'. Shrieks carried over the lake. She broke into a run, then saw Quinn leap off the dock and cannonball into the frigid water. Dee laughed and high-stepped out of the water, hugging herself, water dripping from her bikini. Ellie slowed to a walk and waved. Quinn got a funny little smile and wrapped a towel around his waist. He said something to Dee and then approached Ellie by himself.

"It wasn't Bill Noesi," she told him. "Jury's out on Sam Chase."

"I didn't want to tell you this," Quinn said, "but this summer when we were swimming, I went inside for a drink and when I came back out, he was in the water with her." He lowered his voice further. "He
propositioned
her."

"Maybe he's just a fan of the free market. I'm going to spend the night out here, Quinn. Don't get trigger happy."

"You sure you trust me?" he grinned. "I'm not sure the law would arrest a man for shooting his mother-in-law."

She snorted and went home to grab a nap. At twilight, she walked to the woods beyond the Tolberts' home with her camping gear and set up for the night. She kept watch until the early morning, then returned home to sleep. Not long after, an engine grumbled through the open window. She flopped over and went back to sleep.

A rolling crackle woke her a few hours later. She lay in bed, thick-headed, but then it repeated twice more. From dead north across the lake. She tore out of bed and sprinted up the trail to the Tolberts'.

5

Lucy waited astride her bike in the shadow of the towers, oblivious to the cold bay wind channeling down the avenue, and tasted the air. This wasn't some Folgers shit she was smelling. These were fresh beans.

Down the block, a man emerged onto a sidewalk overhung with scaffolding and headed across the intersection. Caught in the full beam of the fall sunlight, a brushed steel thermos winked under his arm.

She flung aside her bike with a metal rattle, grabbed her umbrella, and strolled to the doorway the man had vacated. Through the dim windows, she took in something she hadn't seen since the prior age: a coffee shop.

She entered, jangling the bell mounted on the door. A row of candles burned behind the counter and the rich, sickly smell of tallow mingled beneath the scorched caramel smell of the beans. The man behind the counter looked less like a barista and more like the bartender at an Old West saloon: prolific sideburns, heavy jaw, a mustache whose handlebars were as sturdy as the ones on her bike. Two young men turned from their booth to give her the eye. By the window, a conversation between two middle-aged men and an older woman continued uninterrupted.

The saloon-looking dude scanned her up and down. "All you can drink for ten minutes in the back room."

"That's not a very profitable way to run a business." Lucy slid onto a round padded stool. "What do you charge people you don't want to stick your wick in?"

"Couldn't say." He kept a straight face as he lifted a carafe and poured a steaming mug and slid it over the counter. "First one's free. Cream or sugar is extra. I accept gold, silver, and anything else that tickles my fancy."

She smiled at him and had a sip. It was good. Fresh roast all right. She drank at it while the man went down the counter and used one of the candles to light a few more. The room brightened slightly. He came back and rested his elbows on the bar.

"New in town?"

Lucy ran her finger around the lip of her mug. "How'd you guess?"

"What brings you to Manhattan?"

"Looking for a girl."

"Join the club."

She smiled tightly and withdrew a dog-eared photo from her shirt pocket. "You got to age her six or seven years. Recognize her?"

He made a thinking noise. "Should I?"

"Well, she's in town and she likes coffee."

"Are you suggesting there's a person who doesn't?"

Lucy took back the photo. "She was drinking it last time I heard from her."

He ran his thumbnail across his brow. "You know she was drinking coffee but you don't know where she lives?"

"This new world don't make a whole lot of sense, does it? You seen her or not?"

The man pulled back from the counter. She swore at her temper. Her mother always told her the man with the scythe could smell anger the way a bear smells blood on the wind. You think it's coincidence so many furious men wind up dead, Lucy? You got wrath, you keep it to yourself. Otherwise there will be no hiding from what you owe.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm just real worried for my friend. I don't think she's as suited to the city as she likes to think."

The man paused a blink, glanced over her shoulder, then smiled in return, mustache twitching. "We've still got coffee shops. How bad can it be here?"

He walked to the back of the room, opened an oven door, and banked on more logs. Lucy swirled her coffee to stop herself from smashing the mug against the floor. Someone moved beside her. She jerked up her cup to ram it into the man's temple. As he showed no further sign of aggression, Lucy stopped her strike halfway through and swerved her coffee toward her mouth instead.

The man gazed straight forward at the mirror behind the bar. He had a lot of stubble and a dirty face that made him look years older. "What would be in it for a guy who's seen your friend?"

"Dope," she said. "The green kind, not the white."

"Dope's a lot easier to find than a lost friend. Stuff grows like a weed."

"If you don't care about the quality. How about premium Charleston tobacco leaf? Get a lot of
that
up here?"

The man met her eyes for the first time. "You for real?"

"Smell for yourself," she said, full of conviction, because for all she knew her homegrown shreds did trace their lineage back to South Carolina. She produced a hand-rolled and held it under his nose. He dug into his pocket and got out a lighter. She grabbed his wrist. "I said smell, not taste."

His eyes flicked between hers, as if seeking permission, then he leaned his nose over the cigarette and inhaled. "I want a pack."

She laughed out loud. Here they were in a coffee house lit by tallow candles where the barista had to percolate his product over a wood stove and this joker was still thinking in
packs
. The world had moved on but people's heads were in the same old place.

It was the sort of thing an unscrupulous person might take advantage of.

"Let's go on outside and enjoy the evening," she said.

The man narrowed his eyes. "What happens if I spill my guts and you try to skip out on the bill?"

"Then you beat me up and take whatever you like."

She pushed off the stool and was out the door while the grimy man was still processing what he had just heard. The sun was hidden behind the western skyline and a chilly wind blew in from the bay. Lucy lit up and passed it to the man as he stepped out the door.

"This is good," he said.

"Great," she said. "Now talk before I get sore about you spying over my shoulder in there."

He glared at her through a cloud of white smoke, then greed got the best of him and he let his annoyance dissipate down the empty avenue. "She's got an accent like yours, right? Like honey on a biscuit?"

"If you say."

"I seen her around." He took another drag. "She works with Distro."

"Who's Distro?"

"The Distribution."

"Sounds scary," Lucy said. "They on record at City Hall?"

The man chortled and side-eyed her. "You're new in town, aren't you?"

"And getting mighty sick of being asked that. How about we skip the part where you act like anyone who's not from this island is a retard? Who's Distro and how I find them?"

The man dug grit from the corner of his eye and flicked it away and grinned. "You would have made a great New Yorker."

"That's because I am a girl of the world." She got out a baggie of tobacco and dangled it from two fingers. "Care to guide me through your corner of it?"

He took and pocketed the bag. "The first thing you need to get through your head is the Feds and Distro aren't exactly friends. The government likes to think they can tell everyone on the island what to do. That doesn't jibe with Distro's business."

"Which is?"

"
Business
. Export, import, you name it. Where you think the coffee comes from? You want it, Distro wants to sell it to you."

"And the Feds want their cut."

He grinned, showing a dead upper molar. "So you go to City Hall with a sack of questions about how to get in with Distro, maybe you wind up on a list. Best case you walk out with the answers the Feds want you to have."

Lucy nodded, taking it in. "So where would I go to speak to the source?"

"You go down to the Chelsea Piers right now, you're gonna find them hauling stuff off the boats. But I don't know if they got a public office."

"Good enough. When you saw my friend, what was she doing for them?"

"Driving the wagon."

"Figures," Lucy laughed. "That girl is horse-crazy. When was the last time you saw her?"